Category Archives: Gratuitous Search Term Bait

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: The Ice Queen

One of our consistently most popular posts is our review of January Jones’ turn as host of SNL from November of 2009, titled January Jones Was the Worst Host Ever on the Worst Episode of ‘SNL’ Ever, so it’s not surprising that among today’s top search terms is “january jones worst host.”  But we’re not going to talk about how terrible she was that night (we’ve spent enough time on that), nor are we going to discuss how horrible we thought she was on Mad Men.  No, today we’re going to talk about an upcoming January Jones project that we fear might be just as bad.

Earlier this week the first images from X-Men: First Class surfaced, featuring January Jones as the White Queen Emma Frost, and it doesn’t look promising.  To Jones’ credit, the whole photo is panic-inducing, not just her part of it (although the look on her face doesn’t help).

To be fair, director Matthew Vaughn has shot back asserting that this is an unofficial photo that does not reflect the look of the film.  Which is somewhat reassuring.  Still, that doesn’t make us comfortable with the idea of Jones as Frost, and nor does it assuage our concern that once again an X-Men movie has chosen to neglect the many proven storylines in favor of a hodgepodge of plot points and characters from the comics combined with an original narrative.  It just seems silly to disregard so many revered and beloved stories.  And by setting this film in the 60s, and including characters who appear in the other films or are related to characters in the other films, it totally confuses the cinematic timeline.  We won’t get into the geeky specifics here, but this is why bringing a comic book to the screen can be so complicated.  In the comic book world super heroes really don’t age, so it’s no big deal for someone to look the same in 1965 as they do in 2005.  But it becomes much trickier with movies, and we think setting this film decades before the previous X-Men films invites too many contradictions.  But we’ll just have to wait until June to find out.

And come back here then to read our review, “January Jones Was the Worst Actress in the Worst X-Men Film Ever.”

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Filed under Be careful what you wish for, Geekery, Gratuitous Search Term Bait, The Big Screen, The Worst, Yasmine Bleeth

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: The Cats Pajamas

We never thought that we’d be the blog that would you’d find by using the search term “cats dressed up,” but, hey, strange things happen.

So, no tricks today, we’re just going to give the masses what they want.  Which is cats dressed like humans.  You asked for it.  You got it.

Cats in pajamas!

Cat on his way to the office!

Highway patrol cat!

Fancy party cat!

And, of course, not creepy at all, cats being served dinner by a rabbit!

See you in your dreams!

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Filed under Be careful what you wish for, Gratuitous Search Term Bait

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: JGL on the GG

Going to go a little outside the box with this today’s search term, “jgl snl,” which, of course, refers to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hosting turn on SNL from the 2009-2010 season.  But what we’re interested in right now is not JGL’s sketch comedy work, but, rather, his appearance on last night’s Golden Globes.  Or should we say his appearance during his appearance on last night’s Golden Globes.  We watched him introduce the clip reel for Inception and remarked to ourselves that his head looked extremely large.  Or his body looked extremely small.  Or a little of both.  Either way, the proportions seemed off.  And we found later that we were not alone, our thoughts articulated perfectly by Videogum:

We can’t knock his hustle, but clearly it wasn’t just us.  But, hey, YOU DECIDE.

And, guess what, this does tie into “snl” after all, because we had the exact same thoughts about Paul Rudd when he recently briefly appeared in-between Paul McCartney performances on hosted SNL.  And, trust us, we’re not trying to be mean here.  There are very few dudes we like more than Paul Rudd (see the previous post).  But, like JGL, he just looked a little…off.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Somebody get those guys a grilled chicken and fresh mozzarella sandwich!  (because we’re eating one of those right now and it’s really good)

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Filed under Gratuitous Search Term Bait, Mancrush, Other people's stuff, You Decide

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: Oedipal Complex

We expect to often see search terms like “justin bieber” and “miranda cosgrove,” and to a lesser, but more encouraging, extent “rashida jones” and “tom westman,” but it surprised us how often one of our top results has been “nasim pedrad,” the talented and pretty comedian now in her sophomore season on SNL.  Not that we think that she doesn’t warrant that kind of attention, but it’s intriguing that web surfers have taken a particular interest in Pedrad, considering that SNL has no shortage of attractive and funny female cast members (Kristen Wiig, Abby Elliott, Vanessa Bayer, Jenny Slate until this season).  Then again, it’s not terribly shocking, as Pedrad has continued to impress us with her diversity and poise, deftly portraying women like Kim Kardashian, Azam Farahi (aka Mrs. Ahmadinejad) and Cristiane Amanpour, as well as performing Lil Blaster in the Underground Records commercials.

Pedrad has also fallen into the unfortunate pattern of playing hyperactive, loquacious, often male, teenagers, which has been the only knock against her so far.  However, despite that, our favorite performance from Pedrad was as wise beyond her years teenager Bedilia, a confident young lady who exhibits just a little too much appreciation for her parents.

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See?  She more than holds her own against Alec Baldwin there.  If Pedrad can excise those other, more annoying, less successful characters then we see no reason why she won’t be one of our most popular search terms for years to come.

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Filed under Gratuitous Search Term Bait, Makes You Think, Saturday Night Live, Yasmine Bleeth

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: Dairy Show

It was just yesterday that we were thinking that our late 2009 blog post Dairy Burn (How ’30 Rock’ Taught Us That Stone Mountain & Long Island Are Not That Different) was one of our better works, if not for its convincing parallels between northeast yuppie suburbanites and southern redneck bumpkins, then purely for its impressive investigative journalism, tracking down the Long Island Dairy Barn that served as Fatty Fat’s Sandwich Ranch in a Season Four episode of 30 Rock. While not our crowning achievement, it’s certainly something to be proud of.  So what luck when we saw among today’s top search terms “dairy barn long island,” giving us the perfect opportunity to link to that original piece.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE POST (AND THEN TELL US IF WE HAVE A FUTURE IN DETECTIVE WORK)

And, for something new, here’s what our hometown Dairy Barn looks like.  First person to pinpoint the location of this branch wins an amazing* prize.

[It’s interesting to note that in that original post we implied that 30 Rock was the second funniest show on television, trailing only The Office.  Now, a little over a year later, we’d easily rank both of those shows behind their two Thursday night companions, Community and Parks and Recreation.  Even more, we’d have to admit that 30 Rock would now be slotted ahead The Office, but more for the latter’s decline in quality than improvement by the former.]

*”Amazing” is a relative term

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Filed under Flashback!, Gratuitous Search Term Bait, Local Flavor, Mars Investigations, Must See TV, You Decide

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: Gold Medley

Today it appears that many of you found this blog by searching for “jimmy fallon tgif themes,” ostensibly referring to the TGIF theme song medley performed on Late Night last April by a capella superstars Straight No Chaser.  While those readers were on the right track, the video from Late Night is, unfortunately, no longer available.  However, fret not, because we’re going to do better than that TGIF-only medley.  Below, find a more inclusive sitcom medley from Straight No Chaser, one that will satisfy your TGIF cravings (Full House, Perfect Strangers), but will also ask you to show them that smile again.

And, just because, here’s SNC (as their fans lovingly refer to them) with their rendition of one of our all-time favorite jams:

It’s Wednesday night and, thanks to Straight No Chaser, we feel all right (also, we’re getting pizza!).

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Filed under Gratuitous Search Term Bait, Growing Pains, TGIF, Tyranasaurus Sex, Wake Up, SF!

And Speaking of Ripping Us Off, Did Rolling Stone Rip Us Off? (What Was That We Were Saying About Jimmy Fallon?)

On Monday, for our Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day, we posted a couple Late Night with Jimmy Fallon clips and the photo of his recent New York Magazine cover, all below a headline referring to Fallon as “Mr. Sunshine.”  So imagine our surprise when the new Rolling Stone arrived in our mailbox yesterday with this cover:

We’re not sure what kind of black magic you employed to pull it off, Rolling Stone, but clearly you saw the post that we published extremely late on Monday evening and somehow rushed this cover to print in time to be delivered by Tuesday afternoon.  Fess up!  First Stephen Colbert infringes on our turf, and now Rolling Stone.  What happened to the rules of decorum for tweeting and journalism (in that order)?  It’s one thing to cop from New York Magazine (which we do from their Vulture blog all the time), but it’s a whole other thing to steal from us.

We guess chivalry IS dead.

(but go ahead and pick up the new issue, or at least read the article, because Fallon most certainly deserves all the attention)

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Filed under Gratuitous Search Term Bait, Internet Killed the Print Media Star, Other people's stuff, Rip-off

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: Mr. Sunshine

Kudos to you out there who searched for “jimmy fallon ny magazine” because you came to the right place.  Because it’s only here at Jumped the Snark that  you’ll find the subscriber-only cover offering this uplifting image:

Isn’t that just what you need to get through the dog days of winter?

And it’s not like us to give you just one Jimmy Fallon-related item.  No, of course not.  Not when Fallon is still riding the hot streak he began in the fall of 2009.  It was another big show on Late Night last Friday, as friends Will Arnett and Horatio Sanz lent their talents to the truly delightful “Pro Bowl Shuffle,” just in time for NFL wild card weekend (notice how they didn’t predict any Jets players participating in the Pro Bowl.  Betting that they’ll be too busy with the Super Bowl, perhaps?).

And then Daniel Holzman and Michael Chernow, the proprietors of the Lower East Side’s The Meatball Shop, stopped by to cook up a few dishes and mix up a cocktail we’ll soon try ourselves (the “port-toddy”).  While they should leave the “ball” humor to the masters, it was nice to put a face on the balls we’ve been eating these past six months (see?  We can’t pull it off either), and we’re especially excited about the upcoming Williamsburg off-shoot of the shop (we’re coming for all your pork meatball smashes with classic tomato and mozzarella).  Spring can’t come soon enough!

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See?  Things aren’t so bad after all.  Not when we have Jimmy Fallon and Late Night to keep our spirits high and the Meatball Shop to keep our bellies full.

 

 

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Filed under Good Humor, Gratuitous Search Term Bait, Intersection of the venn diagram of things that I love, Local Flavor, Matt Christopher Books, Talkies

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: Etymology

There were no new relevant search terms today, but instead of just giving you another Tom Westman or Rashida Jones clip (which we’ll do plenty of, trust us) we’re going to do something a little different.  Some of you out there have been using the search term “jumped the snark,” (listen, guys, the site is just jumpedthesnark.com, no tricks.  You don’t need to work that hard to find us), so we’ll reciprocate with something based on that.  However, we’re not going to self-promote and just link to one of our old posts (or, god forbid, show you our face), but, alternatively, we’re going to offer a little TV history  lesson.  In case you didn’t know, the name “Jumped the Snark” is derived from the term “jumped the shark” which is colloquially used to describe a TV show that has moved its plot in an unrealistic, absurd or hackneyed direction, often with the introduction of a new character or some sort of stunt episode, signaling that the show’s best days are behind it.  “Jumped the shark,” in turn, is derived from a Season 5 episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie literally jumps a shark.  But let’s hear about the origins of the term from the writer of the episode in question, Jeff Breederman:

Fascinating stuff.

And, for good measure, here’s the Fonz:

Quiz on Monday.

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Filed under Count Bleh, Discos and Dragons, Gratuitous Search Term Bait

Gratuitious Search Term Bait of the Day: Teenage Wasteland

We’re lucky enough to post one of our all-time favorite clips today, thanks to the popular search terms “miranda cosgrove and justin bieber.”  Those words have probably brought more teenage girls and middle age men to this site than any other.  They likely realized pretty quickly that this site really isn’t for them, but we were happy to have them nonetheless.

From the wayback machine, here’s a young Justin Bieber calling out at Kanye at the 2009 VMAs:

They look SO young!

(and now we just sit back and watch the page views roll in)

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Filed under Flashback!, Gratuitous Search Term Bait, TV Killed the Music Video Star